Monday, March 28, 2011

Whose game is it anyway?

I've had time to read several blog posts about the outcome of CSM 6 and frankly most of it was negative.The negativity seemed to focus around two things.

The Mittani (and Goonswarm by extension) are going to ruin everything.

CCP will not listen to CSM 6 and will ruin everything.

My candidate didn't make the list and that ruins everything.

They all have the same conclusion:

This will ruin everything.

Really? So we should all stop playing now? Come on folks, let's get a few things straight in our heads:

CCP owns EVE Online and will do as their business model dictates regardless of what The Mittani, Goonswarm or any other player or player union wants - period. Don't believe me? Look at CCP Greyscales' update post here. The key quote is, "we still have a sufficient degree of confidence in our models." Translation: we are in charge.

CCP has far more data to make decisions with than any player, no matter how "experienced," could possibly have. They could produce enough charts to bury Iceland with the data they have. Questioning the decisions they make based on "gut feel" and "game experience" is ridiculous. In am very glad CCP doesn't make their business decisions based on such lame thinking.

The CSM vote was the largest so far; an astounding 14.25% of all eligible player accounts voted! Wow, that's 3 out of every 20 accounts and that includes all those Goonswarm bot accounts that supposedly got The Mittani elected. In reality, CSM 6 really only represents 49,096 accounts. What about the other 278,210 accounts? I guess they were too busy playing EVE. CCP should weigh all that accordingly and only assign 15% of their decision matrix weighting to the CSM... seriously, they don't represent even half of the EVE account base.

This is a game people. CCP owns it, not the players. If you don't like that - leave. Cancel your account and go play some other game. You're health will be far better for it and so will ours. But be sure about what you're giving up. I've played a lot of MMORPGs and there has never been anything like EVE. If, like me, you can't be without it then accept it for what it is instead of ranting about what you think it should be.